"etiquette" news and stories

Several weeks ago, we looked at table etiquette when dining out -- but from the perspective of the server. We asked, "When should a server clear away plates from the table?" The opinions from our reader were about even.

The discussion has prompted another question, this time from the perspective of the diner. When should you start eating? If orders arrive to the table from the restaurant kitchen at different times, should diners go ahead and start when they receive their food, or wait until the entire table is served?

I think the common belief of "proper and polite" is to wait until everyone at the table has been served. However, it is becoming increasingly popular to "go ahead and start" even before others have been served. Diners who are still waiting for their food feel bad that food might get cold.

What do you do? Do you find it rude if others start eating before you have been served? If you're the first one served, do you feel impolite if you start eating?

The Chicago Tribune brought up an interesting question this week: when should a server clear your plate from the table? Should a server remove plates as a diner finishes them, regardless of whether dining companions are finished? Or should the server wait until the end, when everyone has finished, and clear the entire table at once?

Some people belong to the "Clear at the End" camp, thinking it rude. It disrupts the conversation at the table, and may make fellow diners who have not finished eating, feel rushed.

Other people belong to the "Clear as You Go" camp, and according to Emily Post, this is a newer practice. The argument is that clearing plates keeps the dining table less cluttered, and in fact, many diners see this as attentive service on the part of the waitstaff. Additionally, I know that some people like to have plates of unfinished food removed because they don't want to continue to pick at it.

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Every so often - by which I mean frequently - a thread (or three) comes up at Chowhound about tipping. Since Chowhound is a community of people who not only love food, but love to eat out in restaurants, the debates can get pretty heated. Though some feel that the new minimum tip should be 20%, the standard tip is about 15% of the check. Since most places have a significantly lowered minimum wage for tipped employees, tips are not bonuses, but a substantial part of the income of servers.

Tipping philosophies vary widely with age, life experiences and even personality. Some people tip the same percentage - no matter what. Others take into consideration every aspect of the service, as though they have a formula that deducts or adds percentage points accordingly. A few seem to begrudge the fact that they have to pay to eat out at all (despite the fact that these people often eat out frequently) and tip little to nothing.

In California, where the sales tax is fairly high, I double it to get the tip amount and usually end up tipping somewhere from 16-18%, depending on which county/city I am in. If I'm visiting friends in a state with low sales tax (6% or less), I'll triple it. This makes my calculations short and sweet, though I'll definitely consider tipping extra for excellent service or if a member of my party was difficult for some reason.

How much do you tip, and would anything about the service change the amount?

At Chowhound, there is an interesting discussion going on about dinner invitation etiquette. The question is whether you should extend an invitation to someone who probably will not be able to make it to the event. The chowhound who started the thread had a friend who was offended that she was not invited to a dinner, though she admitted that she probably would not have come anyway. On one hand, you might think that if she wasn't going to come, it does not matter whether she was invited. If she had decided to show up, though, it could have caused problems for the group, which was dining at a restaurant.

Excluding large events, like weddings, most dinner parties at restaurants or at home have a lot that depends on the dynamic of the group. When you are planning the party, you want to make sure that everyone will get along and that you have a good mix of people. You want to invite people who will get along and you have to know in advance how many people are coming in order to place a reservation or make the appropriate amount of food.

Personally, I think that the friend was out of line. Do you have to be included in every single thing a friend does? No - and if you're not going to come anyway, don't complain about it.

In the Etiquette column of this month's Good Housekeeping, there was a strange query. A reader wanted to know whether it would be appropriate to move someone's shopping cart when it is blocking the aisle in the supermarket. I'll let that sink in for a moment. Assuming that the reader was not planning on moving the offending cart to the far end of the store, was this really a question that needed to be asked? Does she simply stand there behind the cart and wait for something to happen? If the owner of the blocking cart had moved off to look for something else, leaving the cart unattended, one must wonder how long she would wait behind the unmoving cart. The columnist suggested that a polite "Excuse me" would probably suffice, but that it was acceptable to "gently push the cart aside" if left with no alternative. Is this sort of issue really such a crisis that they needed to write to a national magazine to have it sorted out? I can only hope that she doesn't live in my neighborhood, because if she is that unable to navigate the grocery store, I'd hate to see her in busy traffic.

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